The Doom & Groom Story
Dearly departed, we are gathered here today to celebrate your descent. A final journey surrendering to the lure of the sea. An unearthly destination loaded with rampant youth energy.
We pay our respects to the murky waves that swallowed us whole, spitting us out at dusk. We ponder the fate of reaching the eternal shores. DOOM & GROOM.
DOOM & GROOM spawned from the mind of Uppercut Deluxe founder; Steve Purcell. A purist at heart, Steve takes his cues from everything that came before him... be it 80’s films, archival skateboarding videos or Ozzy Osbourne and his bat-biting antics - some of the greatest ideas for campaigns and capsule collections rise from a nod to all that is nostalgic.
Like an itch scratching the back of his brain; packaging up a pomade into a coffin-shaped vessel seemed unachievable for years. Round-table discussions, sketches, countless scribblings. Will it be air tight? Could the lid be sealed around such an obtuse shape? Will it look cool? Yep, the challenges in upkeeping the performance of a pomade in a highly original shape were real. And yet, we marched on!
But how did we come up with the name? Quite simply. Its early Spring and the east coast of Australia is waking from another sleepy Covid lockdown. The morning still fresh after an evening of rainfall; as Steve slumps in his wagon seat watching the surf whilst the sonic thundering of Sabbaths ‘War Pigs’ booms over the stereo. The ocean has been dead-flat for weeks on end. Things felt a little dire. Dull. Same-ol’ same-ol’.
Coffee in hand he squints through the haze across the headland and out to the horizon, anticipating a potential set. And as if on cue; a stack of solid head-high waves lurch up off the outer shelf and break into the bay. Wall after wall of murky greens partly luminated by sunlight roll in. Each pushing through steadily, yet fierce - detonating and churning into a deep-water channel closer to the rocks. Unruly, empty and unridden. In that moment things felt better. The spell had been broken. There was light at the end of the tunnel. The name DOOM & GROOM is born. In the end, its all about just having fun.
"Doom & Groom was simply concepted out of us wanting to scale back the seriousness of our own pressures and get back to focusing on fun. Create a bit of mischief and be ridiculous again. Just having a lark. We've managed to go full circle with this one in terms of cultural tastes too! Throughout past campaigns we've sprinkled in van culture, music or skateboarding - so this one embraces a unanimous love for surfing. Doom is purely a celebration of clowning around in the face of negativity" says Founder Steve Purcell.
